Past Imperfections
by Kate28
Summary: CJ has a secret she has been keeping for seventeen years (CJ/Toby)


Past Imperfections  
  
Summary: CJ has a seventeen year old secret she has kept from Toby  
  
Author: Kate  
  
Characters: CJ/Toby Spoilers: Anything up to The Black Vera Wang Rating: PG  
  
Disclaimer: Not mine, otherwise I'd be really rich!  
  
Feedback: Yes please  
  
A/N: Thanks Kimberly for reading this and giving me your opinion.  
CJ woke feeling the weight of his arm across her body and wondered, not for the first time, how she had lived without this for so long. She'd missed waking up with him, missed making love with him but most of all she had missed just being with him.  
  
They'd been inseparable in the early eighties, living in a loft in New York cruising from job to job and living on cigarettes and great sex. Both had thought they would eventually get married but neither was in any rush to change what they had. They were having fun and enjoyed just being together.  
  
Then CJ got the job offer of a lifetime, at least she had thought it was at the time. Account manager with one of the largest Public Relations firms in LA. Toby had been less than enthusiastic and told her there was no way he was moving to California. That had been the beginning of the end.  
  
They spent the next two weeks fighting and crying and making love until CJ could bear it no longer, while he was at work one day she rang and accepted the job and caught the next plane west. Toby had tried to get in contact with her but she refused to take his calls believing a clean break was for the best.  
  
Two months later she found out she was pregnant. She rang Toby to tell him but a woman answered the phone explaining she was Toby's fiancée Andrea. CJ didn't leave a message.  
  
She didn't see or hear from Toby for twelve years, until he came and got her for Jed Bartlett's campaign. Twelve long years where she had jumped from job to job and bed to bed trying to forget about him and how much they had meant to each other.  
  
When they began working together on the campaign they decided they should keep their relationship purely professional, that lasted until they won their first primary. They had started by just having celebratory sex, then it became commiseration sex, holiday sex and weekend sex, before they knew it they were living together again and it all seemed safe and familiar and right.  
  
None of their colleagues really knew what their relationship was, some suspected they were more than just friends but most just thought they shared the flirtatiousness of old buddies.  
  
She leaned down and dropped a light kiss on his lips "Wake up sleeping beauty, it's time to rise and shine"  
  
Without opening his eyes Toby deepened the kiss and pressed his body against CJ's leaving her in no doubt about what he wanted.  
  
"Not this morning I'm afraid" she told him as she rolled out of bed "we have staff in approximately 45 minutes and if you want us to arrive separately one of us needs to get up".  
  
"CJ if you'd just marry me we wouldn't have to arrive at work separately"  
  
CJ turned to him trying to gauge the seriousness of his comment. They'd been through this before but not recently "Toby we've talked about this, you're my boss, it's just too tacky" she used the same excuse she had for the last two years whenever the topic came up but it was sounding less convincing every time she said it.  
  
CJ didn't tell him that she couldn't marry him while she kept secrets from him, secrets she knew could destroy them but ones he needed to know about before they could commit to each other forever.  
  
Later that day CJ was still thinking about Toby and marriage and what she had to tell him before that could happen. She knew it would have to be soon because she was falling more in love with him every day and wanted nothing more than to be his wife but he had to know what she had done seventeen years before.  
  
"CJ I have Hogan here to see you - she looks pretty upset" Carol told CJ as she handed her a pile of files.  
  
"Bring her through" CJ flicked through the files while she waited for the teenager to come through. "Hogan, honey, what's up?"  
  
"Oh Aunt CJ I don't know what to do" the she sobbed as she sat on CJ's sofa.  
  
"Calm down and tell me what's wrong" CJ was concerned, Hogan was usually unflappable.  
  
"I don't know where to start"  
  
"Well how 'bout you try at the beginning" CJ tried to lighten the mood.  
  
"Yesterday in Biology we were looking at DNA. We had collected samples from our family and looked at them under the microscope. Aunt CJ the DNA I collected from mom and dad say there is no way I am their child. I..I..I'm adopted" she cried into her aunts shoulder.  
  
CJ didn't know how to respond. She knew the truth and could tell Hogan about her parents but she wasn't sure if she had that right. She wished she could talk to her brother and sister-in-law but they were overseas for the next three weeks and Hogan was staying with a friend.  
  
CJ took a deep breath, they had all known that eventually this day would come and CJ made a decision, the second hardest decision of her life.  
  
"Sweetie, we need to talk, but not here". Knowing her aunt would tell her the truth Hogan calmed down visibly. They grabbed their coats telling Carol they would be gone for a while and not to call unless there was a real emergency.  
  
They sat in a park, watching children play and mothers pushing their babies in strollers. CJ took a deep breath and began telling Hogan her story.  
  
"You know Toby and I were together a long time ago but what you don't know is that just after we broke up I found out I was pregnant. I called to tell him, hoping that maybe now he might come out to LA, but when I rang Andi answered the phone and told me she and Toby were engaged.  
  
I couldn't believe he'd moved on with his life so easily. I got scared and didn't know what to do. I'd just started a great new job but I was single and had no money, there was no way I could have had a baby at that point in my life.  
  
Around that time your mom and dad found out they couldn't have kids. I thought long and hard about my decision, but I knew I didn't want to have an abortion and I knew I couldn't raise a baby so I asked your mom and dad to raise my child"  
  
CJ sat quietly waiting for Hogan to absorb what her aunt had just told her and the implications of it.  
  
"So your really my mother" she eventually said quietly.  
  
"Kind of" she took Hogan's hand in hers half expecting her to reject the contact, pleased when she didn't "I gave birth to you, but your mom is, and always will be, your mother I've always just been cool aunt CJ".  
  
"Do you regret it, giving me away I mean?"  
  
"Not regret exactly, I've always been part of your life and I've always known you were far better off with you mom and dad than you ever would have been with me, but if you're asking if I wish things had been different - yeah - I've wished that every day since I found out I was pregnant" she answered as honestly as she could.  
  
"Does Toby know about me?" Hogan asked showing a depth of maturity CJ had no idea the teenager possessed.  
  
"No" CJ answered quietly, looking towards her feet.  
  
"Well this has stayed a secret long enough, I think I deserve the opportunity to get to know my other father - call him and get him down here" Hogan told her decisively.  
  
"You're taking this very well - I always thought when you found out there would be a lot of yelling and tears and I was never sure if you would forgive me for doing what I did"  
  
"CJ" CJ noticed she had dropped the aunt title "I've always known that you've loved me like a daughter, now it makes sense why. I'm not going to rant and rave at you, I understand what you did and why you did it. Like you said it's not like you gave me up and I had a crappy childhood, I couldn't have asked for a better mom and dad, but I doubt Toby is going to be as understanding" she said wisely.  
  
Hogan had certainly inherited her pragmatic nature and also her ability to cut straight to the heart of the matter. "Honey I know you probably want to talk to Toby about this but I need to tell him in private."  
  
"Tonight" Hogan told her.  
  
"Yeah okay" CJ said dreading the coming evening  
  
"And I'll be over for dinner tomorrow night"  
  
They sat there in silence for the next few minutes each absorbed in their own thoughts about what had just been revealed. Hogan had a feeling of excitement. This news didn't make her love her mom and dad any less, if anything it made her love them more for adopting her, but she was excited at the prospect of CJ and Toby, two people she admired more than anything, being her birth parents.  
  
CJ was tense and had no idea how she was going to tell Toby. She was so proud of the way Hogan had taken the news, it reaffirmed her decision of seventeen years ago - she could never have raised a child to be this understanding.  
  
Hogan turned to her and held her hand "For the record, I think you would have been a great mom and I know you wouldn't have given me a stupid golfers name" she smiled.  
  
CJ called Carol and told her she wouldn't be in for the rest of the day. She went home and curled up on their bed breathing in the scent of him, knowing that after tonight he probably would never lie here with her again.  
  
Toby arrived home early, concerned that CJ had not returned after leaving with Hogan. He walked into their bedroom and seeing her curled up in a ball crying, immediately rushed over to her.  
  
"Ceej, honey, what's wrong?"  
  
"I have something to tell you that's going to make you hate me and I can't seem to stop crying" she blew her nose as she spoke.  
  
"Nothing you could ever tell me would make me hate you" he told her while gently stroking her hair.  
  
CJ prayed he was telling the truth because she had lived through losing him once and she didn't know if she could survive it again. He pulled her into his arms "Just tell me".  
  
As CJ told him her story she could feel his body tensing and his hand stopped stroking her hair. When she finished he stood and began pacing the room.  
  
"Please Toby..Please say something". Her eyes were red from all the crying she had been doing and she hugged her knees to her chest protectively trying desperately not to throw up.  
  
"You've kept my daughter from me for seventeen years what the hell do you want me to say to you!" he raged at her. Before she could say anything he grabbed his coat and was gone.  
  
Toby didn't know what to think or where to go, he just wandered the streets until he came to a bar. He sat there for hours slowly consuming more scotch until he was asked to leave. He couldn't go back to her, he wasn't sure if he could ever go back to her. She had betrayed him, she had kept something from him that he had a right to know.  
  
He hadn't been lying when he told her he could never hate her, he loved her more than anything, he had for nearly twenty years. When she had left him in New York he had been devastated and had slowly been drinking himself into oblivion when he met Andi. He knew at the time he'd only married her because she reminded him of CJ but in the end she was like a carbon copy of the real thing - close, but not quite perfect. He'd tried to make his marriage work but in the end they both realised it had been doomed from the start.  
  
He eventually went to his office where he spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, playing what CJ had told him over and over in his head.  
  
You were getting married  
  
I was scared, you weren't there  
  
David and Elizabeth couldn't have kids  
  
I thought I was doing what was best for everyone  
  
Hogan is your daughter, our daughter  
  
As he kept replaying her words a part of him came to understand her decision but he didn't know if he could ever forgive her for keeping the knowledge of his daughter from him.  
  
Later that morning at staff both CJ and Toby looked like they hadn't slept in weeks and Toby was wearing a crumpled suit. Sam, Leo and Josh assumed there was something going on between the two of them but even Josh had the good sense not to say anything about their appearance.  
  
Toby couldn't look at her and see the pleading in her eyes, begging him to understand. He spent the meeting looking at his shoes and grunting when asked for an opinion. As they were walking down the hall CJ cornered him "Hogan would like to see us tonight" she told him quietly.  
  
Still not able to meet her eyes he answered "Yeah".  
  
Hogan took one look at CJ when she arrived and knew Toby hadn't taken the news well. She just hoped CJ had convinced him to be here tonight. If there was one thing she knew, it was that CJ and Toby belonged together. The fact that they were her parents made it that much more important they realised it as well.  
  
"So is Toby going to be here tonight?" she asked  
  
"Yeah he said he would" CJ answered her flatly  
  
"Well then, maybe you might want to brush you hair or put on some make up" Hogan told her frustrated at the way CJ was reacting, she wasn't even making an effort to try an make things right with Toby. She pushed CJ into the bedroom just as Toby let himself into the house.  
  
He stood there staring at Hogan. Hogan stood there staring at him, neither knowing how to react to the other. They'd known each other for five years, for five years Toby had been like part of the family and now he was family Hogan didn't know whether to hug him like she usually did.  
  
In the end Toby made the decision for her and pulled her into a tight embrace "so how you going kid?" he asked never wanting to let go of her.  
  
"Good, a bit weird, but good" she smiled at him "but I'm worried about CJ - she's been throwing up".  
  
A look of concern crossed Toby's face briefly "She probably hasn't slept, that can make her feel sick" he tried to say it dispassionately but it didn't quite work, he was obviously concerned.  
  
CJ walked into the room and stopped the minute she saw Toby. She tried to smile at him but it died on her lips as soon as she saw the look on his face.  
  
"Well I think we should all sit down and talk" Hogan told her parents.  
  
"Yeah"  
  
"Fine"  
  
They all sat there in silence for a couple of minutes until Hogan could take it no longer "This is ridiculous - you two have loved each other for over twenty years, I'm managing to deal with this why the hell can't the two of you!" she yelled at them "I happen to think it's extremely cool that you two are my parents, I happen to feel very lucky that I have two sets of parents who love me some kids are lucky if they get one parent, I also happen to know you two love each other and if you let this drive you apart you're not the people I thought you were."  
  
"Hogan " Toby began "you've got no idea how pleased and proud I am that I'm your father but I feel like I've been cheated of your childhood and I don't know if I can forgive that"  
  
"What would you have done - honestly - if CJ had told you I was on the way?" Hogan asked him.  
  
Toby immediately went to respond that he would have been on the first plane out to LA, but realised that was the 47 year old mans response. At thirty he couldn't be sure that it would have been his first reaction. He knew that eventually his sense of duty would have dragged him to LA but he would have hated it and in the end he probably would have ended up hating CJ for making him be there.  
  
"I don't know" he replied quietly "but I had a right to know, to be part of whatever decision was made" he looked at CJ as he said this.  
  
"No Toby you didn't - you gave up those rights when you asked Andrea Wyatt to marry you less than two months after I left. I had to make the decision on my own because the man I loved, who I thought loved me, was getting married to someone else" she raged at him.  
  
All the anger she had felt towards him for marrying someone else seventeen years ago was coming to the surface and she could seem to control her emotions. One minute she wanted to yell and scream at him and the next she wanted to cry and have him hold her and tell her everything would be all right.  
  
Hogan was shocked at the way CJ was raging at Toby and what she was saying "Well it seems to me that you two have quite a few issues to deal with, so here's what's going to happen. Tomorrow I am flying out to meet up with mom and dad and when I get back in three weeks time I expect you two to have sorted out your relationship and worked out some way we can all be a family".  
  
As she was walking through he front door she looked over her shoulder at both of them and stated quite clearly "Just so you know what my expectations are - I've always wanted to be a big sister".  
  
Two weeks had passed since Hogan had left. CJ had hoped she and Toby could sit and talk that night but he had grabbed his coat and left straight after the teenager without saying one word to CJ. And it had been like that ever since, he avoided her at work, sending messages through Carol, Sam or Josh and when he did have to speak to her she was left in no doubt about the way he felt.  
  
He didn't know what to say, for a man who made his living working with words he didn't know what to say to make everything all right between them again, mostly because he didn't know what he was feeling. Part of him understood what she had done, but every time he thought of Hogan he thought about everything he missed and he blamed CJ. He just wasn't sure if he could ever move past that.  
  
CJ had been feeling sicker and sicker every day. Toby hadn't been home for two weeks and had barely spoken to her at work, she missed him more than he would ever know but something Hogan had said kept playing in her mind 'I've always wanted to be a big sister.'  
  
Only this morning she had been in a meeting in the oval office when Josh had walked in with coffee for them all and she had run out of the room to throw up.  
  
She had felt like this once before. Seventeen years ago, she and Toby had broken up and she found out she was pregnant and now it looked like history was going to repeat itself. She couldn't be sure until she had done a test but she knew they had been less than careful in the last year or so. CJ had always figured she was too old to have another child, they thought the odds of not getting pregnant were definitely in their favour.  
  
That night CJ sat in the bedroom they used to share feeling exactly the way she had when she was twenty-five. Except she wasn't twenty-five any more, she wasn't flat broke and Toby wasn't going to run off and marry someone else. This time she would be able to keep their baby and for the first time in two weeks the cloud of misery that seemed to be consuming her began to lift.  
  
The next morning CJ looked better than she had in two weeks and she decided that the time had come for Toby to talk to her. She knew his moods better than anybody, the longer she let him stew over her 'betrayal' of him the more likely it was he would sink into that dark place he went when he didn't know how to deal with emotions. But now she needed to get him back, she needed him and the baby needed him.  
  
"He's not in" Bonnie told her as she went to open his office door. "He called Leo last night to say he needed a few days off".  
  
CJ almost visibly deflated "Oh okay well if he calls can you ask him to give me a call" she said knowing he wouldn't.  
  
"Yeah sure"  
  
CJ walked into her office to find Josh sitting at her desk "Well you look better than you have in the last two weeks - you and Toby finally sort out whatever the hell has had you both looking like the walking dead?"  
  
"If you remove your bony ass from behind my desk I'll overlook the walking dead comment for the moment" she told him trying to summon a smile.  
  
"I'm sorry but I'm really worried about the two of you and now Toby had decided to take a few days off - a man who has never even had a sick day - well quite frankly I'm scared" he said in his typical little boy manner.  
  
"I know I have to fix this, because he won't" CJ told him "but at the moment I have no idea where he even is".  
  
"Have you tried him at home?" Josh asked  
  
"Josh" she looked him in the eye "he hasn't been home for two weeks" she told him deciding it was time to come clean about their relationship.  
  
"How do you know, he may not have been answering the phone or opening the door to anyone" he told her still not quite understanding what she was getting at.  
  
"Josh Toby's home is - well - his home is my home" she told him quietly, letting the news sink in.  
  
Holy hell he thought, this is worse than they all imagined. There was a world of difference between friends having an argument and lovers having a fight. "And just how long exactly have you and the Communications Director, your boss I might add, been living together?"  
  
"A bit over three years" she told him obviously shocking him  
  
"Well you're just full of secrets aren't you" he said sarcastically, feeling betrayed that two of his best friends kept such a huge part of their lives a secret from him for so long.  
  
You don't know the half of it she thought to herself.  
  
If CJ thought Toby being angry with her was bad it was nothing to the anger being directed at her since she told Josh she and Toby had been living together for three years. It took Josh less than a day to spread the news to the rest of the staff and if she had been in a better mood she would have been thinking it was a new office record for spreading gossip.  
  
Since Toby wasn't there the anger everyone felt was directed at her. Josh and Sam were both upset because they thought of CJ and Toby as family and felt like they had been lied to. Leo was angry because it had the potential to be a scandal if the wrong people found out. The President was angry at them because he felt like he had been deceived by two of his most trusted advisors for the last three years.  
  
It didn't seem to matter what she said or did it just made the situation worse and after three days of this treatment she had enough. It wasn't fair that she was taking all the heat for keeping their relationship a secret, Toby had kept it a secret too. However when he finally returned to worked after four days they were all so used to taking their anger out on CJ that nobody considered redirecting any of it towards Toby.  
  
CJ went to Toby's office the minute she found out he was back.  
  
"We need to talk" she said quietly but firmly.  
  
"Yeah we do, but not now".  
  
"When Toby? Before you pull another disappearing act? Before Hogan gets back? Before our...." she left the sentence unfinished knowing this was not the time to tell him about the baby. Toby heard the desperation in her voice and for the first time realise she had been suffering as badly as him for the last two weeks.  
  
He remained silent not knowing where to start, CJ thought he was shutting her out again, she turned to leave his office.  
  
"I tried to write you a letter to tell you everything I was feeling" he said almost inaudibly "I thought I would express it better on paper rather than telling you".  
  
"I never got a letter" she told him.  
  
"I know, I could never get past writing I love you" he looked at her and saw hope shine in her eyes.  
  
"Then you should have sent me that" she said as she walked out of the office.  
  
Once they were in the staff meeting Toby noticed how strained things were. They all seemed to be deliberately excluding CJ and occasionally Josh made snide references to her ability to keep secrets from them all. Toby was shocked to think she had confided in Josh, not knowing Josh was actually referring to their relationship being kept a secret.  
  
When Josh commented on how they weren't sure if they could trust CJ anymore, she finally lost it.  
  
"How dare you! How dare you all sit in judgement of me. There were two people in that relationship yet I don't see any of this so called 'mistrust' directed at Toby." Toby cringed at the use of the past tense when referring to their relationship. "Yes we kept it a secret from you, but you know what, for some strange reason I thought I was allowed to keep my private life just that - private. And you know what else, if I hadn't thought you would all react exactly the way you have maybe we may have told you before."  
  
"They know about us?" Toby asked her quietly.  
  
"Yes and don't you dare sit there blaming me for everything that's happened" her hormones raged at him "You haven't been here for four days I haven't known where the hell you were. You have made no attempt to talk to me, no attempt to work this out" she was yelling at him oblivious to the others in the room "You've been off trying to work out if you can forgive me for doing something I honestly believed was the best thing to do given the situation. Toby you weren't there for me, I needed you and you weren't there for me, it took you less than two months to replace me - so don't you dare tell me you don't know if you can forgive me for my 'betrayal' because the minute you asked Andrea Wyatt to marry you you betrayed me!" she yelled at him. "What I need to know is if we can work this out before history repeats itself" she said more quietly and left a room full of stunned men staring after her.  
  
The President was the first to recover "Toby I don't know what the hell all that was about, but go and fix it. I don't want either of you to set foot in this building again until you have worked out whatever the hell it is!" he boomed.  
  
"Yes sir" Toby said distractedly still wondering what CJ meant by her last comment.  
  
She needed to get out of the White House, she needed to get away from them all. She stopped by her office to grab her coat and bag and tell Carol she would have to get Henry or Sam to do the briefings, she wouldn't be back for the day.  
  
She was walking down Pennsylvania Ave when she heard him calling her name. She stopped walking but didn't turn around to face him. When he caught up to her she began walking again, more slowly this time allowing him to walk alongside her. Neither made eye contact.  
  
"What did you mean?" he asked. She remained silent. She hadn't meant to blurt it out like that. She didn't even want to tell him until they had discussed the past. She needed to know he was with her because he understood and forgave her, not be there because of the child in their future.  
  
"I don't want to talk about that yet" she told him "We need to talk about Hogan, about what I did".  
  
"I haven't been able to think about anything else for two an a half weeks"  
  
"Toby we need to talk about it, I need to talk about it, to make you understand why I did it, I can't lose you, I can't go through that again" she said almost desperately.  
  
"I don't want to lose you either but every time I think about it I can't help thinking about what we missed"  
  
"Don't think of it in terms of what we missed, think of it in terms of what she had. She had two parents who adored each other and adored her, she had everything a child could ever want, a stable home, good schools. Look at the person she has become and think of the people we were back then, we couldn't have given her any of that."  
  
"You should have told me CJ"  
  
"And what would you have done Toby?" she looked at him for the first time "jumped on the first plane out to LA, left your fiancée? You would have hated living in LA and in the end you would have hated me for making you be there."  
  
He couldn't deny anything she had said.  
  
"I rang to tell you when I found out" she told him quietly "I even thought I would toss the job and come back to you, I was so scared of being alone with a baby, but Andi answered the phone and told me you were engaged" the hurt of that phone call was still evident in her voice "how could I tell you, you had obviously forgotten about me and moved on to a new life".  
  
"I never forgot you CJ, have you ever looked at Andi? She is a tall opinionated redhead, sound like anyone else we know?" he tried to joke "I married Andi because I didn't think I could have you, I know now it was wrong, but I was devastated when you left and she was there, and so like you, but in the end she wasn't enough, she wasn't you"  
  
CJ was shocked by what she was hearing, all this time she had thought he got over her so easily, that what they had wasn't as important to him as it had been to her, but she'd been wrong.  
  
"I'm so sorry Toby" she cried as he took her in his arms. It felt so good being back in his arms, like everything would be all right. "I can't regret what I did, but I do wish things could have been different. Neither of us can change the past but I need to know if we have a future"  
  
"CJ I've done nothing but think for the last four days and it didn't matter how angry I was at you or how sad I felt about what we missed out on, I kept coming back to the same thing, I love you. The thought of not having you in my life was too devastating to contemplate".  
  
He kissed her, it was a kiss filled with forgiveness and promise for the future and love. "So what did you mean about history repeating itself?" he asked. She raised one eyebrow indicating he should think about it. Eventually it came to him. "Oh my god.. are you serious..you're..we're" he placed his hand against her still flat stomach "we're getting another chance" he told her quietly.  
  
"Yeah" she put her hand over the top of his "I don't want to screw it up this time, so before you run off and marry someone else, will you marry me?" she asked him.  
  
"I always thought it was the man who proposed, you're robbing me of my manhood CJ"  
  
"Your manhood is making me throw up every morning" she laughed feeling almost giddy with happiness. They were going to make it and they were going to have a baby, her life couldn't get any better. "So will you?"  
  
"Well, you've rejected my 63 proposals and if I were a vindictive man I would probably make you suffer but I'm just too damn happy to do that to you, so yes CJ I'll marry you" he grabbed her and kissed her.  
  
"I guess we should get back to work and start mending some fences, we put a lot of noses out of joint by keeping our relationship a secret" she told him.  
  
"Trying to work in as many clichés as you can there CJ" he laughed at her and got a punch in the arm. "Hey, is that any way to treat your future husband and father of your children"  
  
"Do you think Hogan will be pleased with the way we've managed to work out how we can be a family?' she asked him already knowing the answer.  
  
"Oh, I think Hogan will be over the moon - god I've caught your cliché disease. I think we'd better get home and start celebrating before I lose all command of the English language"  
  
"I think if we go home I can probably make you forget your command of the English language" she teased.  
  
He looked at her "yeah I think you probably can".  
  
Three days later they were at the airport waiting for David, Elizabeth and Hogan to return from their trip, a beautiful diamond solitaire was perched on CJ's engagement finger and a grin from ear to ear on Toby's face as his arm rested proprietarily around her waist.  
  
Toby couldn't stop grinning, this was so much better than his 'Day of Jubilee' and he had scared people with his happiness then, he was going to absolutely terrify them now. It had been a wonderful three days. They had returned home and made love over and over again and late that evening Toby produced the most beautiful ring CJ had ever seen.  
  
"I bought this for you seventeen years ago" he'd told her. She'd been shocked. "It's taken long time to get it on your finger" he said as he slid it over her knuckle and raised her hand to his lips and kissed it "but now that it's there I don't ever want it to come off, I want us to be together forever".  
  
"So do I Toby - more than anything". She was still trying to get over the fact that he had been planning to marry her seventeen years ago. It was so hard not to think 'What if.' but she knew it would do no good, the past was gone and they couldn't change it but they had a wonderful future to look forward to.  
  
"Ceej can I ask you something and then I promise we'll put it all in the past?" he asked her seriously.  
  
She nodded  
  
"What would you have done if David and Elizabeth hadn't wanted to raise her?...Would you have had..." he left the question unfinished, he couldn't bring himself to say the word.  
  
CJ stroked his cheek with her hand "It was never an option. I couldn't have done that to our child. I'd decided that if David and Elizabeth didn't want her I would put her up for adoption but when I held her for the first time, she looked so much like you I knew I couldn't have done it. It was only the fact that I could see her whenever I wanted and watch her grow that I could hand her over".  
  
Toby pulled her into his arms and they went back to bed.  
  
The next day they'd arrived at work together. They exchanged secret looks and smiles throughout the staff meeting until Leo finally had enough.  
  
"Okay you two, what is it, yesterday you both looked terrible and were barely speaking to each other and now - well quite frankly watching you fawn over each other is making the rest of us nauseous" he said in his usual gruff manner.  
  
"Get used to it guys" CJ laughed at the looks on their faces as she flashed her ring for them all to see.  
  
....................  
  
Hogan was the first to see them and when she saw the way they were standing together she ran over to them and launched herself into their arms. "I knew it, I knew you two would work everything out" it was then she noticed the ring sitting on CJ's finger "Oh my god you did more than just work it out didn't you! You're getting married!" she squealed.  
  
"I think she's a bit excited" David draped an arm around his daughter's shoulders as he walked over to them "Congratulations sis, it's about time" he kissed her on the cheek and shook Toby's hand.  
  
CJ had been concerned how David and Elizabeth would react to her having told Hogan about her true parentage but he immediately put her mind at ease.  
  
"We always agreed that when she was old enough we would tell her the truth, it's okay, I don't think we're going to have to cough up for any huge therapy bills, she's taken the news really well".  
  
"Are you kidding? Two sets of parents to boss me around, you lot are going to be paying for therapy 'till the end of time" she laughed as the five of them turned to leave the airport.  
  
"Oh by the way Hogan" CJ said smiling "you get your other wish too". It took a minute for Hogan to understand what CJ was saying and when it finally dawned on her she threw herself back into Toby and CJ's arms.  
  
"Yes! Yes! Yes! I'm going to be a big sister".  
  
The End 


End file.
